Not enough Candide

La Scala theater, the most important opera house in the world, cancelled the Bernstein's Candide that was scheduled to take place on June 2007. The reason is related to an allegoric scene inserted by the director Carsen in which Bush, Blair, Putin, Chirac and Berlusconi dance naked (with pants indeed) on a lake of oil. Well, perhaps who cancelled the show thinks that Berlusconi could not be represented in human shape as well as some gods , anyway this episode causes the unpleasant feeling that Italy is still the same old unchangeable country where a sneaking censorship defends the power, where the preservation of privileges is a basis for the society.

Set them free!!!!

Since a couple of years, during Christmas time, Italian cities are invaded by climbing Santas like the ones showed in these pictures.
You can see climbing Santas really everywhere hanging on every window, wall, balcony... These unlucky Santas are doomed to climb for weeks despite of weather conditions (rain,snow,frost,wind..).
Now it has been created an organization (Climbing Santa Liberation Front, Movimento di liberazione Babbi Natale scalatori) that want to set free those unfortunate Santa Claus to bring them to their sledges and reindeers.
The Front has already set free many Santas but it received some legal accusation for theft too... don't frighten go on like this!!!!!

Thanks Mr. Welby

I would like to thank Mr. Welby for the courage he demonstrated during the last months of his life. Fearless people are not afraid of death, they give death a meaning.

Memory refresh

Some things need to be tried more than once. Usually you don't do a certain thing cause you've experimented once and you decided not to try any more. Therefore you systematically stay away from experiences until you forget the meaning of your rejection. To me, one of those experiences is going to shopping centers on festival days (and near Christmas) . Sunday morning I had to go to a shopping center for familiar reasons (not to buy anything), actually I didn't remember any more the meaning of shopping delirium....
A crawling crowd of men, women, shopping carts, children, old men and a really stressful background noise. Your just woke up body ran over by the shopping torrent forcing you to walk at the same speed of the flow while you try not to hurt too much people and you glance 1000 other eyes that you probably will not see any more. Some old men sat on a bench seem to be absolutely comfortable... they speak loud and are ignored by the noisy river flowing beside transporting TV screens, milled meat, routers, apples, flowers, chickens, dog food, jackets
corkscrews, bread... You feel forced to buy something, so you buy some random things like 2 wine corks; but after that you don't feel happier....

Viganella, part two

Since my former post about Viganella mirror has become very popular, I think it's a right thing to complete the info with some other pictures.
The following images are taken from Viganella town website and they report some technical drawing and models.

How to dry your home wash

I just want to index this curious site : Stendibiancheria .
It's really a funny site that allow you to evaluate if weather conditions are appropriate to hang clothes. The service is available for the most important Italian cities but also for some foreign ones.

Shadows

Shadows are entities difficult to catch, they are capricious , take many shapes or disappear suddenly. If you live in a sunny place like Italy then you learn to know shapes end their mood.
Here some picture I took last week that want to make you know about shadows of my places.

Coherence is not a matter for politicians

In Italy the number of marriages is decreasing more quickly than in any other European country. Broken marriages rate is greater than new marriages rate,society is clearly changing, it's a fact. To follow the society changes you have to create new rules, new means to manage the complexity, it's an absolutely normal way to act. One of such new means are PACS ,I wrote about in my previous post.

There are Italian politicians who are leading crusades against PACS to defend the supposed 'Italian traditional family', it's a licit position. The funny (I want to keep calm) thing is that who is leading such crusades is multi-divorced or even not married or again just living with another person after a divorce (an example is Pierferdinando Casini ), therefore it's a part of the society change aforementioned. Perhaps they want to lead a crusade pro-hypocrisy, to keep hypocrisy forever standing still. These are the things that make me view politics thousand miles away from real needs, from real life.

PACS, the latest threat to italian traditional family!

Italian government is wondering to introduce PACS , a form of civil union other than marriage. The achievement of such an agreement between two persons tends to fit a new social reality, couples (homosexual or straight) that live together and have children without being married. These are some of the rights that would be granted to such couples :

• Regulation for shared properties.
• Assignment of rights for reciprocal assistance
• Regulation for inheritance
• Assignment of old-age pension to the partner (in case of death)
• Hospital visit right
• Prison visit right
• Right to make decision in case of partner illness

The political debate about making PACS is really furious. Now could someone explain me the reason why not to grant such rights to couples that want to spend their life together?

Luisona day

Today comes the celebration of "Bar Sport" a satiric cult-book by Stefano Benni telling about a typical Italian cafe (not such the one you can encounter as a tourist). More in detail the Luisona day is dedicated to "Luisona" (sounds like "Big Lucy") a mythical pastry exposed in a showcase of the cafe.
I'd like to pay tribute to Luisona with this homemade translation (Benni please forgive me!) of the book excerpt that introduce it :
At the bar Sport nobody eats nothing. There is a showcase with pastries, but it is purely choreographic. They are ornamental pastries, often rare pieces of handicraft. That pastries are exposed since several years and habitual customers know them one by one. When one of these customer comes in he says: “The meringa is a little tired today. It could be due to warmth”. Or: “It's time to dust the krapfen”. Rarely, the occasional customer dares to approach the shrine. Once, as an example, a sales representative of Milan entered the cafe. It opened the showcase and put in his mouth a big black and white pastry sprayed with wonderful hard-steel grains that mark only truly bad pastries. After a short time in the bar the rumors raised: “Someone ate Luisona!”. Luisona was the dean of pastries,the more aged one and it was exposed in the showcase since 1959. Watching the color of its cream elderly men used to formulate weather forecasts. Its departure shocked everyone. The salesman was invited to exit with the greatest contempt. Nobody touched him, because everyone knew that his insane act just came with the most tremendous punishment. In fact the salesman was found just an hour later, in the toilette of a roadside cafe of Modena, he was sick due to excruciating pain. Luisona had its revenge!. In fact, the main particularity of these pastries is their not so easy digestion. When the pastry is ingested, first of all steel grains perforate the esophagus. Then, when the pastry arrives to the liver, this one analyzes it and renounces to work on it, moving suddenly on the left and let the pastry to pass by. The pastry, still entire, covers the intestine and falls untouched on the ground after a few seconds. If the bartender isn't watching, you can also put again the pastry in the showcase and go away.

The celebration is worldwide, here's the list of places where it has been organized a lecture, a party, a ceremony or whatever to remember the mythical Luisona :
http://www.stefanobenni.it/luisona/

Gifts from the past

The notorious "corporate crate" is the gift that most corporates donate to their workers for Christmas. The crate contains typically foods like oil, pasta, rice, wine, Christmas sweets (panettone, pandoro...), biscuits and so on. This kind of gift is a heritage of the sixties economic boom, after the difficult time of second world war Italy begun an economic raise (triggered by Marshall plan) that generated abundance of food. In the sixties the food included in the given crate was really used as a sustaining mean, now such food is often wasted because it is redundant.
Fortunately things are changing (slowly indeed) and today corporates are starting use the money needed for crates to fund charity foundations and reporting their activity to employees and explaining the destination of the money previously used to buy strange delicatessen like cellar seasoned Monteparruco salami, red wine aged inside Piandelvoltone ebony barrels, panettone with rare Rivadellospavaldo chocolate drops and Carribean rum flavoured cream...

Let's cool the world!

The hottest autumn in the last 30 years. Normally in December the 5rd you have de-iced the windshield of your car many times, but this year I haven't used my de-ice spray a single time yet.
The photo album reporting my childhood is full of pictures in which I play with snowmen, today snow is really a rare event.
Earth overheating is caused by human activities, no more excuses! Unfortunately we don't realise that it's our everyday behaviour the first cause of the disaster, even the most insignificant things.
A research promoted by WWF has reported the following data about Italy :
- 70% of families have at least one energy wasting habit.
- 49% keep regularly electronic system in stand by mode.
- 16% adjust the refrigerator temperature under 6 Celsius degrees.
- 8% use dishwasher and washing machine even if they are not full charged.
It's essential to limit our energy wasting behaviour remembering the pictures of our childhood...

The magic signature

Yesterday morning I was walking around when I was stopped by a guy who got close to me in a threatening way clasping a pen. He said to me : "A signature against drugs,please!"
Since I was a child sometime I meet cases like this repeating always the SAME sentence. STOP, please!!!
A signature against drugs? What the hell does it mean??? If I sign then problems related to drugs will magically disappear?? The actual fact is that who ask for a "signature against drugs" usually is collecting contributions in favour of communities that help drug-addicted people. I give with pleasure my contribution (I did it yesterday morning too) but pleeeeeaaaase ask me the the right question! I asked to the guy with the pen why he used the same old awful sentence instead of explaining the real reasons. He replied :"I use this sentence because it makes the people to come near!". Come near????? I saw with my own eyes elderly ladies discovering incredible speed skills as soon as they heard the terrible phrase.

The same old schemes

I live in strange country, a new TV fiction "The father of the bride"is about the relationship between a father and his gay daughter. It seems to be made with the purpose of arouse deepest feelings highlighting parental love. But someone
in the catholic environment is attacking this fiction, I'm talking about the same people who blame the lack of moral principles in modern society.
The only deduction is : given a show about a gentle gay person and a show about a rude, ill-behaved straight person, it's better the second one.
It's better the usual and comfortable schema inside which you can put your greatest
hypocrisies.